You Cannot Live By The Conviction of Another

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.“

John 3:19-21 KJV

In essence what I glean from this is that we each, (YOU specifically) must be convicted and convinced on your own beliefs! It is because of this that we read and study the Bible consistently. And when we are stumped, or even if we are intrigued, that we exert more energy into our research of the answer we need. We should not be concerned where the evidence takes us, because the truth will bear where we will be forwarded. And despite our biases, we strive onward to be truthful to God and ourselves. We aren’t to take any shortcuts to get an answer…we are to do the best to our abilities that God has blessed us with in order to obtain the right and proper answer. And, yes, that includes that we should seek out some of our peers and our elders to aid us in their counsel.

The old adage comes to mind here to surround yourself with people smarter than yourself, people that make you a better person, people that push you to go beyond your limits, etc. Real friends and exceptional people are there to help and to urge you one toward higher heights in your life. Why? Because by urging you on toward those heights in your life, it raises their own standard in life to reach higher themselves. We should have that group of people surrounding us that enables them to push you on to those heights and so that you can also aid them to strive to be that better person that they need to be in order to obtain their goals, as well! It is also called TEAMWORK.

1. “If we surround ourselves with people who are successful, who are forward-moving, who are positive, who are focused on producing results, who support us, it will challenge us to be more and do more and share more. If you can surround yourself with people who will never let you settle for less than you can be, you have the greatest gift that anyone can hope for.” – Tony Robbins

2. “The quality of a person’s life is most often a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group.” – Tony Robbins

3. “We all get what we tolerate, in ourselves and other people.” – Tony Robbins

4. “The only thing that changes our life long-term is when we raise our standards.” – Tony Robbins

5. “Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll argue with you.” – John Wooden

6. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain

7. “Surround yourself with those who only lift you higher.” – Oprah Winfrey

8. “It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.” – Warren Buffett

9. “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

10. “People inspire you, or they drain you – pick them wisely.” – Hans F. Hansen

HOW TO SURROUND YOURSELF WITH GOOD PEOPLE: 5 WAYS TO LET GO OF THE RELATIONSHIPS THAT ARE HOLDING YOU BACK (Posted by Team Tony)

We can either be destined for higher heights, or we can crash and burn, YOU must ultimately make that choice! God desires us all to accomplish His will out there and if your will is to fulfill His will then you have a lot to learn and many hurdles to overcome. And the best way to accomplish that is to surround yourself with the best people possible.

There are about 200+ references to “wisdom” throughout the KJV of the Bible, 180 references to “counsel”, and 10 references to “wise counsel”. There is a purpose that there are so many references, the Bible itself is God’s manual for man to live his life according to the will of God and to live a Godly life, in general. It is also a manual for man to attain clarity as to who God is and an umbilical cord, of sort, that connects us to Him. There is much we can learn from the Bible and from God, if only we would pay attention to the written words that God has preserved for us to read! Therefore, we must ascertain for ourselves the truth and live our lives accordingly!

May God Richly Bless & Guide You, My Beloved!

MK Muphy

No GQ, the Bible is not Racist, Sexist or Boring

ORIGINAL ARTICLE by J. Warner Wallace Posted: Apr 25, 2018 11:52 AM

NOTE: I found this to be an incredibly powerful response to a GQ Magazine article. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

May God Richly Bless You, My Beloved!

MK Murphy

Last week, the editors of GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly online) released its list of 21 Books You Don’t Have to Read. They boldly claimed, “…not all the Great Books have aged well. Some are racist and some are sexist, but most are just really, really boring. So we—and a group of un-boring writers—give you permission to strike these books from the canon.” The Bible was smack dab in the middle of their list.

You may recognize a few other classic works on GQ’s roster of “racist,” “sexist,” and “boring” books: Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and A Farewell to Arms, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. These books were listed for a variety of reasons, but the editor’s explanation for the inclusion of the Bible was particularly harsh: “It is repetitive, self-contradictory, sententious, foolish, and even at times ill-intentioned.” 

While many may find those words to be rather severe, they actually sounded familiarto me when I first read the GQ article. As an atheist, I can remember saying something similar to a Christian co-worker. But that all changed as I began to investigate the Bible using the skills I had developed as a detective. I’ve now come to appreciate the Bible aboveall other texts (religious or otherwise), largely because the editors of GQ are wrong:

The Bible’s not racist:The Bible doesn’t divide people based on their racial identity. Skin color, along with other external human features, are unimportant to God. According to the Bible, God created humans – allhumans – in His image (Genesis 1:27), and unlike the rest of us, God doesn’t judge people based on their outward appearance, but instead “looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). The Apostle Paul wrote that “there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” (Galatians 3:28), and the Apostle Peter said that, “God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35). When Martin Luther King Jr. – a Bible believing, Baptist minister – argued for the dignity and equality of African Americans, he did so based on the teaching of Scripture. This alone is adequate reason to read the Bible.

The Bible’s not sexist:Given the cultural setting in which the Bible was written, it’s unfair to claim it is sexist. In fact, Jesus’ continuous interaction with women was countercultural. He had female disciples, many of his closest friends were women (i.e. Martha and her sister, Mary), and some of his most profound theological teaching was first shared with women (as in John 11:20-27). It was a woman who first acknowledged the identity of Jesus as the Messiah (the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John), and it was a woman (Mary) who first discovered the empty tomb. Women played a critical role in the ministry of Jesus, because as Paul said, “there is no male and female” for we are all one in Christ. This teaching about the value, status and identity of women, written two millennia priorto modern feminist movements, once again makes the Bible worth reading.

The Bible’s not boring:The Bible isn’t simply a collection of moralistic stories and proverbial proclamations, and it isn’t uninteresting. It is a description of the world the way it really is. It presents a comprehensive view of reality, answering the most foundational questions asked by humans for thousands of years. It describes how we got here, why our world is broken, and how it can be fixed. The overarching narrative of the Bible has served to inspire artists of all kinds. Writers such as Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, and Dickens, artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Del Greco, and musicians such as Vivaldi, Handel, and Bach found creative inspiration on the pages of Scripture. If you’re wondering what stirred these great creative geniuses, you might want to read the Bible for yourself.

As I began to investigate the claims of the Bible using my skillset as a cold-case detective, I found that the Gospels varied in content and style, just as I would expect if they were reliable eyewitness accounts of the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. They weren’t overly “repetitive” nor “self-contradictory,”especially given my experience interviewing thousands of eyewitnesses. The Bible isn’t racist, sexist or boring. Instead, it continues to inspire me, just as it has millions of other booklovers. The editors of GQ are wrong, the Bible is still a book you haveto read.

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J. Warner Wallace is a Cold-Case Detective, Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, Adj. Professor of Apologetics at Biola University, and the author of Cold-Case Christianity, God’s Crime Scene, and Forensic Faith.

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The Information Age Just Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up To Be

For in much wisdom is much grief, And he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. ~Ecclesiastes 1:18 NKJV

For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. ~Ecclesiastes 1:18 KJV

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. ~Ecclesiastes 1:18 NIV

With the advent of Bulletin Board systems back in the 1990s and the increased speed and power of the internet, globally speaking, information is at a premium and at times can be highly questionable. Between the internet and the various search engines, 24/7 news channels, mind numbing television, documentaries, and the list goes on and on with some 1000 channels or more. Our biggest problem, in my opinion, is that we fail to properly filter out what we do not need.

The human brain produces approximately 70,000 thoughts on an average day. There are 86,400 seconds in a 24 hour day. That means we have a different thought every 1.2 seconds.

So, as we focus on certain things, we block out, filter out, or otherwise delete other thoughts going on in our minds at any given time. How much happier are you now, right now, with all this extra information? You are probably overwhelmed as I am. It is almost depressing the more one thinks about it all. To one degree we are smarter with some added information; on the other hand, though, we are inundated with a plethora of unnecessary information which does not add to our abilities to make a decision concerning one particular subject. That is because we are forced to sift through all of the added information that we have in order to make that particular decision. Why is that? Because your brain is a tremendous computer, created by God, which strives to find the answer(s) to your every question and problem. Everything you place before it it is searched and your brain sifts through all you know, all you have access to, and then develops more questions that will aid you in finding the answer to your original problem.

There are those, blessed I might add, with the innate ability to “multi-task” a plethora of tasks. This is great for them, but there are those of us who become befuddled with too many tasks bouncing around in our heads. To make matters worse, we take that work home with us, because if we do not think it out we will somehow get things all cocked up the next day when we try to continue on with such a task. I like so many hate to fail and more-so hate to be uncharted waters, so-to-say. Can we learn these greatly needed abilities…yes, we can. But the lack of comfort as a norm is not for some of us. We are each destined for something grand, on our scale but rather minuscule on God’s scale. Though, regardless of how you look at it…you will glorify God as He wills it! As mentioned in another post, God will fill you with the Spirit and will endow you with all the necessary abilities that you need in order to accomplish the task that God has given you to accomplish. Reading throughout the bible you will note that God gave each individual all the abilities and knowledge they needed to do just as He desired of them!

And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship ~Exodus 31:3 NKJV

So, when God is in control there is very little you need to worry or concern yourself about…because God has your back! But when we each do what we want in order to accomplish things on our own, we more or less, shun God from our task and things tend to get messy.

Lately, I have had a series of dreams, weird as it may be for me. Some I remember in the morning and write them down. After I wake I try to write down what I remember of the dream and then research and pray for it’s interpretation. Some of the interpretation I can get from books and encyclopedias on dreams, but other aspects of dreams must be inspired by God’s Holy Spirit. Why? Because it is from God, the best explanation can come from God. Consider in the Book of Daniel where the King was hell bent on killing all the wise men of the land because they could neither tell him his dream nor could they interpret it. Daniel answered the king, “…there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days...” (Daniel 2:28 MKJV; see Daniel 2 for the entire transcript) But there are those I cannot remember which really gets me. Why, you ask? Because it was one of those dreams that woke me in a sweat and concerned me. It is one of those dreams that you would swear that it was something significant. I still await on God’s making aware to me what happened in that dream that is so hard to remember. It just seems to me that it is so key to understanding some of the other dreams I’ve had, or potentially answering some of my questions that I have posed to God. Just a feeling of mine, but it makes sense to me; will you understand? Some of you perhaps you will, others will not, and others will say “he’s off his rocker.”

Never steer away from the guidance of God! God will lead you if you will let Him. BUT you must be willing to give up that control you have over your own life! It is then where God, upon your prayerful request, will lead you through any one of a number of possible venues which will help you see what you must do in order to glorify Him.

Be prayerful, my friends! Be prayerful!

May God Richly Bless You, My Beloved!

MK Murphy, PhD, DD

 

It Takes More Than Memory Work To Be A Man or Woman of God!

You must not just know or memorize the message, but you must live the message every day of your life! In other words:

“Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” ~James 1:21-25

Many people believe themselves to be basically good people, but what exactly are they basing that decision on? Usually, something rather relative to themselves and/or comparative to another person. Our problem is that we must be comparing ourselves to the mandates of God’s word and the laws carried forward and taught by Jesus the Christ, not another person who consistently fails to uphold the word of God! But we each have this comparing ourselves to others problem, because we either see ourselves as being better than or worse than another person that we see. We also permit ourselves to manipulated by the media, in all varieties; whether we are watching some shows (reality television) or something along the lines of a fantasy.

When we see ourselves as being good we generally compare ourselves to Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, or Mao Tse Tung – between the four of them they have killed as many (estimated) as 200 million people. So, yeah…we are all better than they are…how many people have you killed? The fact of the matter is that God does not grade on a curve. Also, NOWHERE in the Bible does it indicate that ONLY Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins, or Mao Tse Tungs are the only ones that go to Hell everlasting Damnation! Does it?? Did I miss that part?? I think not…

While it does take great pains on our part to memorize biblical passages and scriptures, it also takes much willpower on our part to pray daily, to fast, to go out of our way to aid others in need…YEAH, I can also do much better in those areas of my life, too. Do you care for those in prison? Those who are widowed? Those who are orphaned? James talks about this being the basis of religion. In so far as, he meant the actions we take should reflect our words of faith. We as Christians need to reflect the actions of Christ in all we do and say in our daily lives. We are all falling down in this respect of our religious lives. It is only through God’s word by reading and memorizing that we can have God at the forefront of our minds. It is only by striving to do better, that we can actually get better at what we do!

By attempting to do something slightly different than what you did yesterday, in order to improve you can do so one step at a time. Tiny steps of improvement turn into great strides at a later date. Much like compound interest, making little improvements daily or weekly can reap great rewards later on down the road!

Begin praying for but only five minutes and later on it will grow because your relationship with God grows. Talk to Him throughout your day at what appear to be mindless moments, and you will become a ceaselessly prayerful person. No matter what you do to get better as a Christian, as a follower of Christ, or as an emulator of Jesus – take your time using your bible as the guide, gaining a contextual understanding of the bible and passing it on to others. Become part of a group of like minded believers that studies and teaches the bible. There are many out there, if not create one!

May God Richly Bless You, My Beloved!

MK Murphy, PhD, DD